Teleconferencing can be defined as the real-time exchange of information between people who are not in the same physical space. Teleconferencing utilizes a conference call (sometimes referred to as a bridge conference) which is a telephone call in which three or more people converse simultaneously. Many companies use conference calls as a meeting tool or to distribute information to a large number of listeners at the same time.
Conventional conference calls connect people through a conference bridge, which is essentially a server that acts like a telephone and can answer multiple calls simultaneously. Software plays a large role in whether the bridge has capabilities beyond simply connecting multiple callers. A company can have its own bridge or can contract with a service provider for conference call hosting. Providers frequently offer add-on features for conference calls, such as attendee polling, call recording and in-call operators or attendants.
Since offices and employees can be thousands of miles apart, getting everyone into the same room for meetings and training has become decidedly impractical for a lot of companies. This is one of the reasons teleconferencing has become such a popular industry. Through teleconferencing, companies can conduct meetings, customer briefs, training, demonstrations and workshops by phone or online instead of in person.
The simplest phone teleconference is a three-way call, available in many homes as a service from the telephone company. Another very simple (but not necessarily effective) method is to have two groups of people talk to one another via speakerphone. The limits of three-way calling and the sound quality of speakerphones make both of these options impractical for most businesses.
Existing Bridge Conferencing Products have the ability to record a Bridge Conference for playback. There is also the ability (potentially) to keep track of everyone who was a part of the Bridge Conference (roster). Most, if not all, IM applications have the ability to keep transcripts of IM conversations. There are also “deep tagging” applications (for example, http://www.viddler.com/) where users can annotate and share annotations on streaming media content.